Sunday, April 29, 2007

I have been thinking about color a lot lately. You say, "well duh, you are an artist why wouldn't you think about about color?" Anyone who creates art certainly thinks about color......which colors to use, how to mix them, which colors compliment each other, etc. But, I'm thinking about people and color. When I meet someone and get to know them, I assign a color to them, either consciously or unconsciously. When I think back I've done it for most of my adult life. With some people I get a very strong feeling instantly about their color, others it takes a few days or weeks. Some people are one color to me, others are two colors and it's rare for me to assign 3 colors to a person. For example, my husband is a deep forest green, my friend Danielle is orange, my little great niece is lavender, my friend Gloria is white, my brother Jimmy is navy blue, my dad is cornflower blue, my friend Lori is black & white. I'm not sure how these colors relate to the person's personality but I'm sure there is somebody somewhere that could psycho-analyze it and come up with a theory!

I know, by now you are thinking this is either "C-R-A-Z-Y" and I'm losing my marbles or as an artist you can "relate" to what I'm saying. I do this with vintage pictures too since they are in black and white it's easy to assign a color to the person after I study their face, their posture, who they are with in the picture and then a color pops into my head. When I saw the little girl with the doll in this collage, I thought of the various shades of white and a very pale pink.

I entitled this collage, "Love in Shades of White", it reminds me of one of my favorite perfumes by a very old perfume company called Creed. The perfume is called "Love in White". We could talk about how pictures evoke scents, but that's another subject for another day and another blog entry! My question to you is "if you had to assign a color to yourself, what would it be?"

Saturday, April 28, 2007

About the collage: Vintage photo of a little French boy, layers of paper, stamp of the Eiffel Tower on decorative paper, paisley stamp in various sizes which were stamped on gessoed on a page of book text and were then hand colored and then glued overlapping each other.

I came across a stamp last week that said, "you're special". This little stamp put my noggin' in motion and I began to search through my vintage pictures to match the right picture with the saying. I'm not sure I got the right picture to go with the "you're special" stamp....what do you think? I've named him Pierre because he is a little French boy! I'm sure he was special to someone in his life! I'm very fortunate, I have many special people in my life.....my wonderful husband Gary, my family and great friends. How about you? Who are the special people in your life?

Thursday, April 26, 2007

These little dudes are the original "Beach Boys"! How about these little guys, aren't they cute? I just love their expressions. Kind of makes you wonder what they were thinking.....where were they going......who bought those little sailor outfits for them? Maybe a favorite rich aunt bought them the outfits! The collage was created on heavy duty cardstock with layers of decorative papers. I painted on the white bubbles with Lumiere paint. The fish were cut out with the small Sissix fish die.

The frame started out as just a regular dollar store frame, based with blue acrylic paint and then distressed with sandpaper. I took little flat backed clear marbles, stamped the letters on decorative paper, cut them out and then glued them to the backs of the marbles to create the word "beach". Shells were then glued on tiny clear glass beads were glued on close to them.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

When I saw this photo of these little girls making the silly faces, my first thought was that I had to create a collage with it. The second thought that came to mind was that these silly young girls remind me of the silly old girls I eat lunch with everyday! I just met this group of girls in September at my new job and they are hilarious. Contray to what a lot of people think, we do not sit for 30 minutes and eat and talk about other people! We sit and talk and laugh and laugh and laugh! We laugh with each other. We even laugh at each other. We act like a bunch of 10 year olds. We talk about how many marshmallow peeps we could cram on our mouth.....we talk about the best kind of potato chips ever.........we talk about clothes.........we talk about what we are going to do over summer vacation.....sometimes we bring up our favorite Hallmark video-card called Sarcastic Wednesdayand then we really laugh, even though we've seen it 10 times! Sometimes we laugh until tears spill over out cheeks and we lose our breath. How wonderful is that? How many people get to say that they get to be ten years old again for 30 minutes every day and act like a bunch of silly girls? Not many is my guess!

Monday, April 16, 2007

I love schrooms of all types (here's a yummy stuffed portabella mushroom recipe). I was inspired by a new paint I found called Lumiere. This paint is good for a variety of mediums including fabric, wood and paper. It's wonderful....covers nicely and comes in the best metalic colors. I used Halo Pink on this collage. This collage took me about 2 hours to complete and I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I just kept layering papers, cutouts and stamps. My husband came home with a bag of Tootsie Rolls right when I was completing it and on a whim I made the pixie have a Tootsie Roll hat! Seems inspiration hit best when my mouth is full of chocolate goodness!

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Just a few more minutes! That's what I'm always saying to my husband or thinking to myself when I'm in my studio, but this week I was so busy and so tired that I didn't get a chance to spend even a few minutes creating anything new. Bummer! I was really anxious to get to work last night and made the following..........

The Queen of Paris! She was inspired by the Eiffel Tower stamp I bought last weekend.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

My mom makes the most wickedly awesome chocolate covered peanut butter Easter eggs you have ever put in your mouth. They are soooooooth and creamy inside. The best way to eat one is straight out of the fridge! I'm sharing the recipe for them with you because something this good needs to be shared! Enjoy!!!!!Nanny's Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter EggsMelt 1lb of margarine in the microwave and let cool. In a large bowl add 2 cups of smooth peanut butter, and 1 lb. of powdered sugar and begin to beat with an electric mixer. Slowly add melted margarine (you might not need all of it so don't get wild and crazy and just dump it!), into the peanutbutter and powdered sugar mixture. Mix until it holds together when you form an egg shape. Now's the time to use some problem solving skills......if it's too crumbly, then add more margarine; if it is too sticky then add more powdered sugar. Cover a cookie sheet with waxed paper, form into egg shapes......your choice...tiny (bite sized), medium (just enough) or the super honkin' egg size as big as your face (eat all of this size of egg and YOU WILL BE SICK!). Place on waxed paper and put in fridge for about an hour. Melt a chunk of chocolate in the microwave and dunk the egg into it. Spoon additional melted chocolate on top of it and place back on waxed paper and place back into the fridge to chill. Store in a zip-lock bag and keep in the fridge.

Remember how good warm sand feels between your toes?Well the calendar says "Spring" and Easter is tomorrow........but we have 2 inches of snow here in PA and it's 26 degrees! Even though the weather is not optimal for an egg hunt, I'm still thinking positive that the weather can only get warmer....right? Actually my mind is on summer with less than 2 months of school to go, it will be here before you know it. I love the water and will be spending a lot of time out on my pontoon boatthis summer. Whew-whooooo! Here are some "beachy - water" inspired collages. I'm thinkng about either framing them or sandwiching them between two pieces of glass and soldering around the edges like I did with the "Beach Girls" collage.This collage was inspired by a new friend that I met only a meer 8 months ago but feel that I've known for a long time....we are "like minded" people!Don't you just love the look on his face? He's the little Captain!The Beach Girls loved the water and loved getting together to drink wine and be silly! Isn't that what friends are for?

Monday, April 2, 2007

Isn't this just the greatest little antique tea cup and saucer? I love the spring colors, especially the lavender color. It was made in England and is bone China. I got it a few weeks ago at a wonderful little antique shop called Time and Again on Route 19.